Don Norman's abstract of his article for Core77 on design education seems to echo exactly the thesis of an article I read in the old UK Chartered Society of Designers journal, probably in the mid 80's.
Being currently on the other side of the planet, I don't have access to my paper archives, so I can't offer a reference. The article was mainly concerned with furniture design rather than product, but the general gist was similar: design education remains too much based in craft and craft skill, and not enough in education for industrial design. That this should still be an issue is profoundly worrying, but I think it goes much deeper: Since the collapse of the Modernist consensus, undergraduate design education seems to be mired in a crisis of theory: What to teach and how? This would be a happy and creative opportunity were it not that, too often, it seems to be an unrecognised crisis, or at least, one unrecognised by those who ought to be doing something about it. That it has been going on for so long, is a tragedy, and I sometimes feel we are in danger of 'losing design' altogether, in the sense of losing all recognition of it, in the specialisms of the academy and in public perception, as an integrative discipline, and not a mere collection of assorted industrial crafts.
With new technologies of manufacturing beginning to mount an assault on the last bastions of skill, it seems to be ever more urgent that design education re-invents itself and shows that it is something bigger and more important than the ever more fragmented specialisms that seem to be popular in many colleges.
Andrew J King
Sent from my iPad
On 5 Oct 2011, at 09:16, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> For your amusement (or perhaps annoyance). My latest essay on design
> education on the core77.com website:
>
> Design Education: Brilliance without Substance
> http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/design_education_brilliance_without_substance_20364.asp
>
> We are now in the 21st century, but design curricula seem stuck in the mid
> 20th century, except for the addition of computer tools . . .
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